"Climate change is an issue that is almost designed to create apathy ..."
-- Linda Connor, Science Alert, 20 May 2010
The writer argues that the rise of climate change denialism in the face of growing scientific evidence of serious consequences of climate change can be explained by looking at basic human psychology. Essentially, we're talking about extrapolating psychology to the sociological sphere.
Negative messages about the future, such as those expressed in discourses of climate crisis, are a challenge to our cultural projects of immortality. These negative messages, connected with death and decline, engender conscious and unconscious defence mechanisms that send us back to the life-affirming messages of consumer capitalism.
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Climate change plucks the painful nagging fear at the heart of most Americans that our childish and carefree existence, lives where we can casually fulfill every whim by using just a bit more energy to bend reality to our desires, has a price that must be paid. A very high price. A price that includes having to grow up.